Advertisement retargeting is related to online advertising, and in particular, behavioral retargeting and CRM (customer relationship management) retargeting. Behavioral retargeting, also referred to as behavioral remarketing or retargeting, and CRM retargeting are forms of online targeted advertising where online advertising is directed or targeted to consumers based on their previous Internet or offline activity.
Behavioral retargeting and CRM retargeting use accumulated data or prior knowledge of a user or customer, typically accessible through a CRM system or similar database. In retargeting systems, advertisers use offline CRM system information, such as purchase history and search history, to optimize their online advertising.
Known retargeting systems depend on the consumers' web browser cookie to identify them. The consumers' previous online and offline activities are keyed by the web browser cookie. The user has the option to disable the cookie on a personal computer, thus is essentially in control of his or her own privacy requirements. However, various web browsers available on most mobile devices do not support third party cookies, and most mobile device applications do not support cookies as well. Without a stable cookie, advertisers cannot identify a consumer and deliver targeted advertising to a mobile device.
Because of the widespread adoption of mobile devices, such as smart phones and tablets, consumers increasingly spend more and more time on mobile devices. Different technologies exist to uniquely identify a user's mobile device, such as device fingerprinting, device unique identification, MAC address-based identification (media access control address), identification based on the MSID (mobile station ID) of the mobile phone, and the like. However, such unique mobile device identification techniques raise significant consumer privacy concerns, and may run contrary to legal regulations, especially because the user of most mobile devices cannot disable transmission and interception of the MSID and the like.
Mobile devices, such as smart phones and tablets, have become a significant media consumption point for consumers, and many applications on such mobile devices are configured to provide accurate user location, such as latitude and longitude based on GPS systems built into the mobile device. Given the privacy and legal issues mentioned above, and because of the lack of stable cookie data present on mobile devices and usable by mobile browsers, it is desirable to provide a more efficient behavior retargeting system and method that uses discernible attributes associated with a mobile device.